Mediaboss Marketing

Run, Saverin! Run!

Were it not for the fact that youd still have to suffer the eternal torment of actually living with your wicked, miserable little self, life as a willing and active member of The State might be pretty tempting. After all, Team State operating in direct competition with Team Freedom enjoys some rather significant advantages, both on and off the field.

For one thing, Team State writes the rules of the gamerules it claims the right to change at any time and for any reason. It can choose to make Team Freedoms goal the size of a pea, for example, and its own goal the size ofwellwhatever it wants. It can recruit a million, steroid-jacked players to wear its own colours, and limit Team Freedoms membership to a couple of wimpy, though doggedly irreverent, newsletter writers. Who listens to those guys, anyway? Pshhh

Off the field, Team State may choose to sequester part or all of Team Freedoms funding. And if Team Freedom doesnt like it, Team State reading again from its own rulebook can choose to simply begin kidnapping members of Team Freedom at gunpoint and locking them up in cages.

More troubling still, Team Freedom suffers the added disadvantage of large scale defection and even of outright collusion with the enemy. In other words, many of Team Freedoms players are really (whether knowingly or not) playing for the other teamusing morally malleable catchphrases like fair share, civic duty and social contract as a way to distract and bamboozle some of Team Freedoms star players. They read aloud and with unashamed authority from Team States own rulebook, exclaiming with sweaty excitement, But its the law! Look, Team State wrote it down, right here!

And what can Team Freedom do about all this, other than vote for another member of Team State to act as game referee every four years or so? Nothing. Or so it would seem

Fellow Reckoners will by now be aware of the latest scheme by Team State to encroach on the lives of those they clearly consider to be their property. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey, two of the moreeractive members of Team State, held a press conference Thursday morning on Capitol Hill where they outlined legislation that would prevent Eduardo Saverin, the Brazilian-born, Singapore residing co-founder of Facebook, from ever returning to the United States.

Now, why would these senators do such a thing, you ask? What do a couple of freeloading, career barnacles have against the entrepreneurial spirits of a go-getting, 30-year-old success story?

Turns out that, back in September of last year, Saverin decided he didnt want to be considered a US tax slave anymorea move 1,700 other now-freer people also made during the same year. Abiding by the law, as decreed by members of Schumer and Caseys Team State, Saverin relinquished his citizenship and moved to Singapore back in 2010, a place where he (and his property) are treated in less of a gun-in-your-face, gimme-all-your-money manner.

According to industry estimates, the move should allow Saverin to keep about $67 million more of his own money than he would have otherwise been entitled to were he still officially a US resident when Facebook makes its IPO, tomorrow.

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Eduardo Saverin and Team Freedom Versus Team State